Heritage Album

I am not who I thought I am, where do I start? (full detail in post)?

Ok so listen to this! For the last what 4 years or so I have been doing family tree research and got involved with a DNA project for my last name. I had paper chart going back to 1600s, well other people that connected to me were interested because all my papers going back to 1600s.. Well someone paid for me to do a longer DNA test (25 marker) since we were not matching right. Well as of this A.M. I was told that I am not related to the tree i thought I was due to name. This is absolute no possibility of mistake either. So now all I have is some numbers telling me where I came from and no papers. I am not really sure where to go from here. I matched a few people that are 2 markers different. Not sure what that means but I emailed them with hopes of anything. 2 out of three were also adopted or had my story. the rest aprox 8 were last name Little. Not sure how to figure this out. I am working backwards. Any help. Sincerely Lost Identity,

Public Comments

1. maybe this will shed some light for you. One of my lines works back into Virginia, and if you run the name, you will find him shown with at LEAST 3 different fathers. In the last 5 yrs, I worked this line HARD and have documents that (in my opinion) directly DISPROVE each of those claimed. I have watched these different "conclusions" spread out.. people make the "conclusion" on "they lived in the same county, it must be his father/son" or stuff like this. In many cases, you learn to spot where someone has copied a file (the "source" is shown as another file, or the wording is exactly the same). If you ask WHAT IS YOUR SOURCE?, most of them will get huffy because they have worked hard, and how dare you ask that? You ask, so you can compare records. Too much of the time, they do not HAVE a record to compare to. A lot of persons here take offense, when they believe that they have researched, because they have looked it up online. This saddens me... because without using any original items, they don't know which is good/ bad. Somewhere, someone in your files has a bad connection. YOU may be absolutely methodical, but even things like published items are proving to be errors. It may (or may not) be an assumption you picked up at. IF possible... stand back and look at the links with a critical eye. Is there one that others mention not having proof? A place where you KNOW IT to be solid, but the prior is shaky? When the paperwork is solid, those believing a connection should be supported. It can be so so tricky in the 1600s and 1700s.
2. If you really have a paper trail, one that you hold a good confidence in, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS go with the paper trail over ANY DNA results. And it's easy to explain why. Surname banks are the new thing. Getting people to take DNA tests (especially the much more expensive 16 or 25 marker ones) and putting them in a spot for comparison with others with the same surname. And yes, I'm sure on their home page, they have a number of "success stories" prominantly displayed (but somewhere they also probably indicate "results not typical" just like you see on the latest miracle diet product adds). Consider this....you have 4 grandparents. Only ONE carried your surname. But, on average, only 25% of your DNA is inherited from that grandparent....your 8 great-grandparents (again, likely only one with that surname), you have inherited only 12.5% of that DNA. Surnames come and go, some have been around for a long time and yes, have been consistently maintained through generations. Others not so true (my wife's surname was actually made up by one of her 4th great-granduncles back in 1890 for business reasons - yet, not a single living relative of my wife knew this until I did genealogical research on her line). But you mentioned the date 1600. If your common ancestor with anyone else with the same surname was from that time period, then you are realistically talking 11 generations. In 11 generations, you will have inherited 1 divided by 2 to the 11th of your genes from that common ancestor. That works out that you have only 0.000488th of that common ancestor's genes --- which is LESS THAN 1 GENE! How could you possibly match??? Of course you MIGHT, and if your common ancestor was much more recent (say 1 or 2 or 3 generations) you might get a higher partial match. MIGHT. That's the nasty little secret of the Surname DNA sites. Go back even 4 or 5 generations, and the likelyhood of matching even absolutely known relatives is slim at best. So really think about how many "grandparents" you have at each generation, and at each level, probably only one had your current surname. Why would you expect your genes (which had 4096 direct blood contributors - many more than the actual number of markers being tested obviously) to match someone who, in common with you, has only 1 of those 4096 contributors in common with you? Go with the paper trail.
3. The company that did my DNA test said 2% - 5% of the samples they got proved someone wasn't who he thought he was because of "infidelity or a secret adoption". You might be one of those. You may have relied on faulty sources. The DNA company may have made an error. You could just drop it and take up fly fishing or stamp collecting instead of genealogy. You could pay to have your brother or father's side male first cousins tested. If they all match each other to 37 points and you don't, it is a VERY delicate question to ask your mom and dad about. You could get a 25-point test by a second company and see if it matches the first company's test. If it doesn't, one company was in error and the only way to tell which is to get a 3rd test by a 3rd company. Options 2 and 3 are very expensive, obviously.